So I was out fetching dinner for my family this evening and listening to our local NPR station. Before you roll your eyes about listening to NPR, yes I sometimes listen to see what “the other side” is thinking. Besides, radio is so barren in my local area that I’m sometimes forced to turn on NPR. Sad, innit?
Anyway, there was a story about Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan’s collaboration with (bankrolling really) Ave Maria University in Naples, FL and a number of housing developers to build a town based on Catholic values. The big brouhaha is that Monaghan and the developers of the town have requested that drug stores that set up shop in the town of Ave Maria don’t sell contraceptives. Of course, the nanny-statists at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are raising holy Hell (pun intended) about this. They claim that a town cannot deny people access to abortion mills and contraception.
I’m personally a very secular person and haven’t ever been a member of a church but I don’t see what the big deal is. If people don’t want to live in a town where they can’t get birth control or an abortion, THEY SHOULDN’T MOVE THERE!!!! DUH! Again, the developers have made this a request, not a condition for receiving building permits, business licenses, etc. It would be illegal to do otherwise. And for those who want to move to Ave Maria in spite of this, they can go to the next town over and get what they want.
And really, I don’t think the town is going to have in-home inspections to check for the presence of condoms nor are they going to subpoena medical records to see if people have had Depo-Provera shots or Norplant or an IUD implanted. First, it would be a waste of taxpayer money and second, it would be a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibiting unlawful searches. One would think the ACLU, which proclaims itself to be the self-appointed defenders of the Constitution would know this. But no, they’ve decided to set up an office in Naples to “montior the situation”.
Just like some people choose to live in Washington, DC, Chicago, Morton Grove, IL and New York City where guns are banned (or are virtually so), people also choose to live in Kennesaw, GA where, with a couple of notable exceptions, gun ownership is mandatory for heads of households.
For those critics of the goals of the Ave Maria developers, freedom of choice means not only having access to contraception but also chosing to live someplace where there isn’t.
